#grothweek2021

I wrote a little drabble for Deet/Kylan (otherwise known as Groth) week! The prompt for Day 1 is Comfort. I also used a secondary prompt of Willpower. I intended to write something cute and fluffy for this, but... that didn’t happen. So, without further ado: a sad drabble. Text here, and a link below to AO3. Drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

-------

There are days where she’s lucid enough to remember his name. It doesn’t happen often. He lives for the days when she meets his eyes and she’s there looking back at him. He lives for the moments where she knows him, and the nights when her touch makes him feel alive again. She tells him she loves him, and he believes her.

He loves her, too. He always will.

But every joyful moment has a cost. When he wakes, she’s always gone again, taken by the Crystal. Her violet, empty eyes haunt him.

He doesn’t stay at her side any longer when she’s missing from her own body. He doesn’t need to see her catatonic and nonresponsive – doesn’t need to keep wearing himself thin by talking to someone who cannot hear him. He’s had to learn about the destructive power of hope, and he’s had to learn not to spend his life waiting.

He simply stays on the periphery and does what he can to bring her back and to bring himself some comfort. He plays the songs that bring a spark to her vacant eyes. He tells stories of his travels around the campfire, and he pretends she’s the one listening to them. He spends long months traveling across the mountains and into the eastern waste, searching for a way to bring her back for good.

The day will come when he can’t stay away from her anymore, though. He knows that it is only a matter of time.

Time they don’t have. Time she doesn’t have.

------